Hot Punks: Teenage Bottlerocket’s “Skate Or Die”

They might hail from Wyoming, but this quartet's sound is rooted in NYC's 1970s CBGBs scene. Download a song!

If there’s one thing Wyoming’s Teenage Bottlerocket aren’t particularly concerned about, it’s guarding their influences. From the Ramones-patented leather jackets they sport in their press photos to the “skull and cross-missiles” insignia that adorns each of their albums (an idea inspired by Alkaline Trio’s skull-in-heart emblem), it doesn’t take much sleuthing to trace the lineage of the band’s proto-meets-pop punk sound.

The quartet signed with Fat Wreck Chords in February; label head Fat Mike of NOFX has been a fan of frontman Kody Templeman for over a decade, having professed his love for Templeman’s first band, the Lillingtons, who disbanded in 2001. Now, Teenage Bottlerocket are set to release their fourth full-length, They Came From the Shadows, on Sept. 15, and SPIN.com has an exclusive peek at lead single “Skate or Die.”

The anthemic rocker is a prime example of Bottlerocket’s classic appeal: fast, tight, brief, and catchy. The song takes its title from the time-worn heckle which still gets shouted at skaters from passing cars — something Templeman witnessed in Laramie (the band’s hometown) as a kid.

“When I was growing up and getting into punk rock, it went hand-in-hand with skateboarding,” he tells SPIN.com. “[‘Skate or Die’] is an homage to that whole scene when it was joined together, whereas now punk rock and skateboarding are kind of at ends with each other.”

The band recently did their part to reunite the two camps, filming a video for the single at a skatepark in Laramie. They posted a bulletin to their website a few days prior to the shoot encouraging local “old-school skaters” to turn out (especially ones that listened to “Ill Repute” while “riding [a] Nash board”). The video even features guitarist/vocalist Ray Carlisle rocking his board.

Templeman, meanwhile, was honest about his own abilities: “I tried to skate. I wasn’t any good, but I went for it.”

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